Quietly and Softly
by Sanpizil
Summary: Yako, Neuro, Godai, and the case of the Overeaten Anorexic. Finished.
1. Wherin Things Begin to Cook

I do not own Neuro, Yako, Godai, nor anybody else here. Woe, woe, woe is me.

* * *

Yako learned to cook her first dish, a fried egg, when she was six. Her father tied a little pink apron around her waist and her mother heated up the pan, telling Yako to mind the heat and watch the butter and if it was overcooked it would get runny.

Yako watched and learned, and eventually made her own egg. Her mother was satisfied, but her father was estatic, pleased with his little girl's achievement.

"She's on her way to womanhood," he said solemnly to his wife. "My little girl is growing up. Soon she'll be big enough for boys to want to kiss her! Why, one might even give her a big green fish to cook up!" Yako's mother swatted at her husband, laughing gaily. Watching them talking, Yako understood that this was a relationship separate from hers with each of them. It was a little frightening to realize that she was not a part of every moment of her parents' lives.

Analyzing this as she slurped up her sunny-side up egg, Yako wondered where she ended and her parents began. It was as if, in her mind, they were grafted together like the fruit trees they had learned about in school. The trees were bases for younger, more fragile branches, Yako recalled. But the trees gave those new branches all their attention, especially if their normal branches were cut off, and so they lived out their lives supporting fruit that was not theirs.

"Papa, papa!" Yako bounded from her chair, feeling suddenly upset and lonely, "Papa, give me a raise! I can cook now!"

Her father swept her up, and her mother kissed her cheek. "Aha, you'll have to take that up with Mama, puppy!"

"Mama, mama! Can I have a bigger allowance? I can cook for us all now!" Her mother laughed and her father tickled her.

"Will you cook us a big green fish, Yako?"

"Yeah, Mama!"

"Just like Papa gave Mama?"

"Yeah, Mama!"

"Well... okay, then. But you have to cook it with chilies, just like Mama did for Papa!" And, just like that, Yako realized that people were not trees. Trees grafted. People shared.

* * *

Years later and degrees colder, Yako stood outside, watching Neuro's office light from the street. She knew that he was expecting her and that she would be in trouble for being late, but even so...

Sometimes she wanted the peace and quiet that had been thrust upon her when her father was killed. At the time she had balked from it, had wanted his loud presence back, but now, with her mornings filled with fans and her days filled with demons, she thought she might like a try at quiet again. It had not been the quiet she had disliked, but rather the method with which it had come upon her.

It had been quiet when she'd first met Neuro. It had been too quiet, and she'd been about to burst into wild tears from the pressure of that blank silence when she'd heard something- cloth on skin? Hair ornaments touching with the faintest of tinkles? The near-gone sound of teeth adjusting inside a mouth too small for them?

Whatever the sound, sometimes she still heard it, and it made her think of Neuro automatically.

Yako shook herself and stepped towards the door.

* * *

"I know I'm late, Neuro," Yako said, nodding to Akane, ignoring her fellow slave as he slept on the couch.

"Aha, Slave Number One," Neuro said, sounding very much like he was going to do something terrible (which he likely was, Yako decided with a tired sigh). "Look, look at what a little research finds you!" Grabbing her head in what was a no more hostile grip than normal, he dragged her over to the moniter and thrust her face to it.

"'Local Woman Dies from Overeating'? Why, how strange, what does that have to do with-" She paused and frowned, feeling cross. Haha, Neuro. So funny.

"Oho, the wood louse is thinking of it from her perspective," Neuro cackled, grinding his fingers into her skull. She fancied, at times, that she could feel little talons on his fingers instead of nails. "But no, read more."

Yako sighed and read further. It had been a hard day in school for her, and she wasn't really feeling up to playing keep-up with Neuro. In this case, though, the problem stood out rather obviously.

"'...Miss Ayame had a long-standing eating disorder that sent her into an institution several times...' Huh." Yako said, leaning back from the screen as Neuro's pressure on her skull eased. He kept his hand on her head, though, and while at night she liked to pretend to herself that it was his way of showing his love, in the fluorescent glow of the office she knew it was so he could grab her again with ease.

Like now, when she was sent flying onto Godai, waking him with a yell and startling her.

"Slave Number Two! Get a car! We're going!" Godai and Yako both looked at Neuro over the top of the couch. He eyed them evilly, treating them to a view of his teeth.

"Neuro," Yako finally said delicately, "it's nine at night. There's no crime scene investigation taking place, because they don't think it's a murder. We don't know the family's address, and we don't know if they're even there." Neuro fixed her with what Godai had one day sourly dubbed 'Those Goddamned Swirly Eyes'.

Yako responded by hunching down, puffing out her cheeks, and shaking her head.

"No, Neuro. We can go tomorrow."

* * *

In the end she won out, simply because Neuro got distracted by a web site that Godai introduced him to that was, supposedly, a Great Mystery.

"Nobody's been able to solve it all the way through," Godai tossed out from his favorite space on the couch. Neuro was grinning in almost disconcerting concentration, and judging by the way his eyes were glowing, he had found it a worthy challenge despite his initial misgivings.

* * *

Early the next day, Yako was dragged from her bed and flung out her second-story window in her pajamas. After a bit of screaming and being caught by Neuro an instant before impact, Yako was able to understand why Neuro had given in to his slaves so easily last night: he had been plotting revenge.

Godai was half-sleeping in his new Jeep when Neuro dragged her out of the house. If she leaned a little, Yako could see that it wasn't quite four am yet by the dashboard clock's measure.

"Neuro," She scolded, "what do you think you're doing? I need to get dressed."

"They live outside the city," He responded as if she had any idea what he was talking about, "and we must get there early or all the mystery will be gone." She frowned at him. He frowned back. Huh. He was serious. It was that case from last night, then?

"Nn, at least let me pack and get dressed," Yako shot out, turning right around and going inside. Neuro followed her, looking a bit miffed. Perhaps he hadn't expected her to be so calm about the whole 'up before the sun' thing. To be honest, Yako was too tired to be upset.

"So how far will we have to go? Godai seems a little too tired for a long trip." Neuro perched himself on her bed, watching her throw a few shirts and skirts into her suitcase.

"We're headed to an estate two hours out of the city. It isn't too far for him." Yako knew that Neuro actually had very little idea what was and wasn't too much for Godai, and she knew that he, at least subconsciously, depended on her to know that in his stead. So she nodded and fussed with a ribbon on her outfit for today, giving Neuro the signal that it would be okay, that Godai's temper would blow over.

If asked, Neuro would say that he didn't care. Yako had noticed, however, that he didn't take advantage of his Slave Number Two more than twice a month on average. It warmed her, a little, to know that Neuro had some small measure of caring (or at least common sense) in him.

"Neh, Neuro," Yako finally said when they had been sitting in complete silence for almost five minutes, staring at each other, "I need to get dressed."

Neuro looked at her for a bit more, making her a little uncomfortable, before silently standing and walking to her doorway. There he stopped, and it seemed like he wanted to say something, that he was waiting. Yako waited too, watching him, but in the end he simply turned and met her gaze before shutting the door behind him.

It occurred to her that perhaps he had been waiting for just that.


	2. Setting the Stage

I still don't own anybody here. But, uhm! Thank you very much for all your kind words, and I'm really glad that so many people have read this! Even if you don't say anything, I really hope you enjoy it! I'm kind of shy myself online, so I understand not wanting to comment.

...It sounds like I'm trying to use reverse psychology, but I'm not! ;.;

* * *

By the time the sun had risen Yako was awake enough to be dreaming of exquisite European cakes. Apparently the victim's father had been a famous baker, and while he hadn't passed the skill down to his daughter, he had founded an elite cooking academy on the premises of his estate before his death.

"Did he die naturally?" Yako asked, reading the file and trying to ignore images of dancing Linzer tortes. Neuro grinned broadly at her from the backseat, his little sharp teeth just visible between his lips. "It says here he left his biological daughter and his second wife behind, and he died from such a sudden heart failure..."

She looked at the pictures Neuro had printed from the internet. One was of the victim, Ayame. She was thin, terribly thin, but in the picture she looked happy. She was beautiful, Yako decided with conviction: her hair was glossy, ebony with a gentle azure undertone, her skin was pale as the moon and clear as a summer sky, and her smile was the sort that had probably lit up an entire room. The picture Yako held didn't show Ayame's eyes, but she felt certain that they would be a beautiful deep sable.

"No, her father died of heart disease. Anyways, he died twenty years ago now." Yako looked back at Neuro from the picture, thinking.

"Mmn, that does seem like a long time for a murderer to wait to strike again. Do you have any idea who might have had any issues with Miss Ayame yet, Neuro?" Neuro grinned blankly while jamming Yako's head almost clean backwards. Godai, still half unconcious, only grunted a little in protest.

"Only a wood louse would ask a question like that. If I knew who it was, would we be going to look for the mystery?" Amid Yako's yelling as Neuro refused to let go of her head, Neuro's mad cackling, and the invasive sunlight of a new dawn, Godai finally woke enough to say something:

"SHUT THE HELL UP!"

* * *

Halfway up the road to the estate, Yako finally asked Neuro how they were going to get in to do an investigation.

"Why, Sensei, didn't you say that you, as the piggish detective, wanted to try Miss Ayame's father's famous dishes at the lovely resort they've set up? After all, you eat so much, you have a great deal to compare it to!" Neuro cackled, leaning forwards to look at the rapidly nearing gate.

Yako looked too, and rather wished that she hadn't: The gate was ostentatious to an almost revolting degree, featuring golden hams and what looked like jewel-encrusted dancing flan. Even Godai, sporting a fresh black eye from his 'insubordination', looked taken aback.

They didn't have to say anything, though, because as they drove through the golden whirls they saw two women facing off against each other, one spitting mad and the other cool as a doll.

"-mockery of my husband's legacy. Who are you to say that I was the one that-" Though the woman currently speaking was cool-looking, especially in a white linen powersuit, Yako noted with a shiver that her face was a mask of distorting hatred.

"I may have made a mockery of his legacy but at least I made him _happy_! As I recall, you failed in even that! And you're not his wife any more, you overdated loaf of white bread, you're just-" The woman practically hopping with rage had clearly been the one to design, or at least approve, the gates. She was glittering from head to toe with jewelry, none of it tasteful. Yako felt certain for a moment that she saw Godai wince when the fresh sunlight caught her sequined top just right.

"Uhhm," Yako said, squirming past an interested Neuro and leaning over the windowsill to try and break things up before they got any more violent.

"What!" Snapped the more angry of the two women. Yako, in a brief flash of insight, realized that she must be looking at Ayame's father's first and second wives.

"Please," stepping out of the car and in between the two angry women was one of the scariest things Yako had done all month, "I understand that the both of you must be very upset over your daughter's death," the first wife snorted and the second frowned, "but think of what Miss Ayame would want. I doubt she would be happy to see two people who she must have held dear fighting!" Godai shut off the engine and stepped out of the car, joining her in between the two wives.

"She's not my daughter," the second wife snapped, looking behind her to the airy white building behind her. "Or, she wasn't."

"Even so, I don't think she would have cared. She was too wrapped up in her own problems to even think of anybody but herself! I mean, look how she died! She couldn't even listen to what her own body was telling her, the foolish girl. My poor dead Ayame." The first wife started to shake her head, then looked at Yako again. "Wait, aren't you...?"

"Yes, yes!" Neuro had slipped out of the Jeep too, and as he clapped a crushing hand onto Yako's shoulder, he made eye contact with her long enough for her to realize she must have missed something important. "Sensei is becoming very famous lately! She heard of your daughter's death on the way here, because as the famous Piggish Detective, she had been wanting to try your late husband's legacies for some time. Sensei has eaten so much, I'm surprised she hasn't exploded!" Neuro was playing the nice boy again, something that tended to drive Godai up the wall and Yako underground in hiding.

Oddly, the second wife winced at something that Neuro had said, surprising given his track record of winning people over with his seeming earnest boyishness. "Sensei will of course offer her full services to you two kind women if you feel the need to question anything about Miss Ayame's death. Sensei is kind and giving like that." Saying something like that with talons digging into your Slave Number One's shoulder took talent, Yako decided. Sick, wrong talent, but talent nonetheless.

"A-ah, Miss Piggish Detective..." The second wife seemed to have cooled down rather quickly, Yako noted. That could be a sign of an unstable personality, or perhaps just a normally even temper. "Yes, well... you do have good timing. Please, come in. Let's talk together."

"Gigi, surely you don't think-?" Gasped the first wife, placing her hands in front of her mouth in a double gesture of surprise.

The second wife, apparently nicknamed Gigi, shrugged.

"I only want to ask her something, Ayame. Come back at a better time. We'll decide about that thing later, when we aren't both so upset."

Yako looked between the two women, a little confused herself. Miss Ayame was the daughter and the one that had been killed, wasn't she? And how on earth did a person get a nickname like Gigi?

Ayame and Gigi had their own thoughts, apparently, because they stared at each other rather intensely before turning, Ayame walking to a sleek little moped and Gigi waving tiredly to them, indicating that they should follow her.

Neuro turned to look at his slaves. "We arrived at just the right time for a fresh mystery," he purred, "perfect timing."

"And how the hell would waiting a few hours have kept us away from some dead woman?" Godai sourly asked, walking back to his Jeep and starting it up. "She's not coming back to life."

Yako, watching the angry strut of Gigi ahead of her, walking at the side of Neuro, thought differently. "It's odd," she told Neuro, "but even though they call each other by name, I don't think they know each other too well."

"They both did something very interesting just now," He mused back at her, his hair ornaments clicking as they went, "but right now, I'm unsure as to what exactly that means." Yako shivered. When she wasn't in the car with the heater on, it was downright chilly in the mist.

"They seem like very, uhhh, passionate women." Neuro looked at her sideways.

"True... but what about?"

* * *


	3. Elements Revealed

* * *

As before, I don't own these people. Well, I suppose I own Ayame junior and senior and Gigi, but they're free to a good home, really. I've been very hard on them.

As for everybody reviewing, thank you again for all your kind words! I'm sorry the last chapter was so short, though. This one is longer, I believe. I'm trying to do a chapter a day, as a sort of uhhh way to build resolve, and I got home very late last night and had work very early the next day. Thank you, **Tryem Loir**, for pointing out a typo in the first chapter!

* * *

"Ayame wasn't exactly troubled, but..." Gigi adjusted her tea cup, watching Yako practically inhale what might normally have fed twenty people. It was a little disconcerting for humans to watch, Neuro had noticed. In fact several customers had remarked that they actually found it physically impossible for her to eat that much, that it must be a trick she played on her patrons to amuse them.

Neuro had his own opinions about that fact of Yako's being, but he certainly wasn't telling anybody until his theory had some better evidence than a large appetite.

Yako, noticing the pause in Gigi's words, stopped eating and looked at her concernedly.

"...But?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Miss Detective!" Gigi laughed uncomfortably. "You just eat so much, I..." Yako colored.

"Yes, Sensei loves to eat all sorts of things! Many people are amazed that she doesn't get fat! She could eat an entire family out of its home." Gigi shook her head emphatically.

"Don't say that. Your appetite is healthy, Miss Detective. I'm used to seeing Ayame picking at her food like some kind of spirit. It's refreshing to see my husband's recipes appreciated so deeply." Gigi paused, looking heartbroken. "Ayame was very sensitive. Her father encouraged her from a young age to cook and cook well, and apparently she took to it. You know what they say about skinny chefs," Gigi tittered sadly, "so Ayame was, well... plump. Like her father."

While Yako listened quietly, her tender expression encouraging Gigi to open up more, Neuro took a look at the kitchen they were in. It was the household kitchen, apparently, and from where they stood Neuro could see a large spice rack holding fresh basil, crushed cumin, home-grown peppers, and other things of the same ilk. At the top, there was what must have been a bottle of vanilla.

Neuro's eyes narrowed. He would have to ask Yako about that, but in the meantime...

"...was named after her mother, who used to be a famous fashion designer in New York. Thinness was very important to Madam Ayame. She has adorable, coy little habits, too, things that make men fall in love with her instantly. She flutters her fingers when she's happy, for example. She was such a beauty when she was young, and even now- well, you saw her."

"She was quite amazing. I see how that would cause problems," Yako agreed. "How sad, though, that the stress of it all led to such a terrible thing." Gigi sighed.

"Ayame looked very much like her, and I think that's what caused part of the problem. But she'd been distancing herself from her mother for a while now, and it had done her well. She was starting to get a little better."

"Oh?" Gigi turned to look out the window.

"She was almost thirty but still needed me to make sure she ate everything on her plate." Gigi shook her head. "It was almost too much for me at times, but I wish now that I had been kinder with her, especially when she was younger. We had a very tense relationship up until fairly recently. I know that even I, in part, had a piece in forming her illness."

Yako remained silent for a long while, her expression taking on the tragic cast it tended to when she was thinking of people in a way that Neuro valued in her but felt a bit too personal to embrace personally.

"I'm sorry," Gigi apologized, her gaudy rings flashing in the afternoon light, "I said I would only take a few minutes of your time but I ended up taking hours. It's a sad burden, but one I must-"

"Ayame was murdered," Yako said quietly. "You know that, you have to." Gigi turned away as if struck, grasping at the edge of a marble counter to steady herself.

Neuro fixed his gaze on her, watching everything from the way her heels slid on the linoleum to the way her hair fell over her face. After a moment of silence, Gigi stood up straight again. Through her honey-brown curls, a track of mascara-tinted tears was tracing down her cheek.

She nodded weakly.

"Do you have any idea who would do this?" Yako asked, looking at Neuro as if to say, _and how?_

"...I..." Gigi sniffled, shielding her face with a glitzy hand. "Of course I know. Ayame and I had our little spats, but I was her main supporter whenever her disease got too terrible for her to face alone. I encouraged her to go into the hospital." Yako waited, tossing Neuro a look that in any other context would have earned her a flight through the air via her head. Now, though, with precious information so close (Neuro could barely taste it, could almost smell the mystery heating up, was almost trembling with the desire to consume it), he yielded to her. This was her territory, and he knew it.

"Miss Gigi...?" Gigi took a deep, quavering breath, then snapped her head to the side in a furious half-nod.

"Madam Ayame did it. She killed her own daughter. I don't know how, or even really why, but I know that she did it. I don't want to admit it. Where Ayame and I fought, Madam Ayame and I always got together and commiserated over how difficult it was to be a mother." Gigi's hands began to shake, and when she knotted them together her knuckles turned white. "But because of that I know Madam Ayame, and I know that she was..." Yako stepped forwards, tearing off a strip of paper towel to offer to Gigi as she began to sob deeply.

"Please," Yako said, taking one of Gigi's plump, soft hands in her own. "Take care of yourself. Ayame is gone, but you're still here."

Gigi repressed a quavering wail that was still audible to Neuro's ears, if not Yako's. He looked over to the vanilla on top of the spice rack, frowning.

"I will," Gigi forced out, her face a mess, but the kind that drew one in rather than repelled one outwards. Neuro understood why her husband had married her in that instant, only for an instant- it took an unusual woman to look kind in misery _and_ warm in happiness. "But listen, first, I know this is important." Yako nodded seriously, eyes fixed on Gigi's face as she wiped it dry as best she could.

"You remember that little flutter of her fingers I told you about?

"She did that when I told her about her daughter."

* * *

Later, unpacking in her room, Yako came to the conclusion that perhaps even Neuro, for now, was stumped. Supposedly he was thinking. In fact he was looking at her bed, an adorably (in her opinion) frothy thing that resembled nothing so much as a frosted piece of shortcake and (in Neuro's opinion) something that was reminded him of the Pits of Torment, whatever those were.

They had discussed everything from Madam Ayame's motive (probably money, they agreed, but who knew?) to Gigi's level of reliability (very high, they concurred, Yako because of her gut, Neuro because of the silent wails Gigi had stifled) to the misplaced vanilla on top of the spice rack in an otherwise immaculate kitchen, but- nothing. Instead of talking in circles, they were now relaxing in the room Gigi had given them.

"I don't understand why you insist on sleeping on the ceiling," Yako growled, half to herself, "it's such crap. You sleep on your chair in the office, why on earth can't you sleep in a chair or a bed here?"

Neuro ignored her to roll about on the ceiling, toying with what looked disconcertingly like another of his 777 Tools of the Demon World- a frog with teeth and a mohawk that sat neatly in his gloved hand. He was waving it around like it was a cell phone with poor reception, and every now and then he would pause and frown, shaking his head to make his hair ornaments clink.

"And besides, why do you have to do it in _my_ room? I mean, Godai and you are both guys, and I'm..." She trailed off, suddenly feeling the intense weight of Neuro's gaze on her back. "...Miss Gigi sure did give us one heck of a look, at least, Neuro. And after how hard it was to get her to open up to us!" The sound of Neuro dropping from the ceiling was heard. Yako felt more than saw him come up behind her. She fancied that, if she reached out behind her, she could touch him. To distract herself from his near-instant proximity, Yako continued to pull out her clothes and inspect them for wrinkles.

"And what do you care?" Neuro asked, so close that Yako fancied she could feel his abnormally hot breath on her neck, "I don't see what the problem is, Slave Number One."

Yako almost turned, but at the last moment she thought better of it. She liked it more when Neuro was tormenting her, she decided abruptly. It was like with her father and solitude: Neuro was only quiet and contemplative, in her experience, when he was weak or injured. She liked not to be thrown out windows and onto people and almost scalped by demonic talons pressing through leather gloves, but not at the cost of Neuro's vitality.

"She'll think we're," she flushed and looked back to her suitcase, realizing that she could unpack no more unless she wanted Neuro to know, intimately, what she wore under her skirt. No, thank you. She could only imagine how he'd use _that_ particular piece of information.

"We're what?" Neuro asked, taking another step forwards. Yako froze, her hands on her suitcase, and turned her head to meet his gaze. He was stooped over her like a raptor over something of interest; it wasn't so far off, she supposed, since as she recalled his demonic form had the _head _of a bird-thing, at the very least. Now she really could feel the heat he radiated, and she wished for a painful instant that she could _do_ something about it.

"She'll think that we're lovers, Neuro!" Neuro chuckled, either ignoring or not noticing her flush.

"She can think that all she wants," Yako admitted to herself that perhaps it wasn't just because when he was gentle he was ill that she disliked him being serious with her; having all of Neuro's vast attentions devoted to you was a very disconcerting thing. "Ultimately, it is we who hold the power in this dynamic."

As it had been that morning, again a strange, anticipatory silence fell. Neuro hadn't really backed off at all, and in fact seemed to be a little closer than before. Yako, meanwhile, forced herself to close her suitcase and turn to face him. The height difference between them meant that she was closer to his chest than his face, but he tipped his head down to look at her, eyes not exactly glowing but not exactly the tepid black her used when mocking her, either.

Yako met his gaze with a concerned, confused twist to her lips that Higuchi had once told her he liked, for reasons unclear (in her opinion, at least). Neuro's hand moved a little, as if it was headed towards her shoulder. Yako tilted her head up to meet Neuro's gaze a little more levelly, determined not to be weak in an arena she could, finally, stand up to him in. She might not have demonic tools, or strengths, or even his level of deductive reasoning, but she could be brave when she had to be and she would show him that. (Unbidden she wondered who really held the power in _their_ dynamic, and what that meant for her.)

"Besides, who would think that anybody would want a lower being like yourself for that?" Neuro's hand swept up to grab at her head before her paused to bare his teeth, chortling, "You'd eat any lover out of house and home. The desperation such a man would experience from your eating would render him-"

Yako, her hands clutching desperately at Neuro's gloves to loosen his grip, gasped and tightened her own grip.

"Neuro! Neuro, that's it!" She shook his coat lapel, taking a tiny bit of satisfaction in his surprised expression, "That's why Miss Ayame ate herself to death! She was desperate, just like you said!"

"...Oho?" Neuro purred. His teeth came out in a hungry little smile. "I suppose I won't need that tool after all. So the wood louse was actually working on the case instead of minding her strawberry panties..." Yako shrieked. He _had_ seen them!

"_Neuro!_ Why were you looking at my-!"

"I WONDER IF GODAI KNOWS WHAT YOU WEAR, YAKO!" Neuro hollered at the top of his lungs. "TINY LITTLE STRAWBERRIES! YOU EVEN HAVE FOOD ON YOUR UNDERWEAR!" A fluster of horrified banging came from next door, where Godai had settled down to nap before dinner.

"This is sexual harassment!" Yako wailed, throwing herself over her suitcase to protect its contents from any further perusal.

* * *


	4. Conclusions with Macaroons

I still don't own anybody. I only write this because I love the series so much.

Uhh, uhh, I'm sorry this is up so late in the day. I couldn't get the motivation, but I had promised myself that I would write one chapter a day until it was finished, and you guys seemed to like having new chapters. I hope the solution to this mystery isn't too anticlimactic.

* * *

After Neuro had told Gigi that the case was solved, for her to please call the local police and Madam Ayame, they settled into the kitchen. Neuro paced as he waited, as was his habit. Yako and Godai sat quietly and talked (widely avoiding the subject of her underwear).

"So her own mother killed her?" Godai asked, stooped over a plate of tortellini. Gigi had taken a liking to the man, apparently, since they had found him most recently being fed from her own personal cook pot. Neuro had made some kind of crack about older women, but Godai had rather uncharacteristically shrugged it off.

"Mm," Yako sighed, "and in a cruel way, too." She had a plate in front of her too, but she couldn't help but feel that her sandwich, the most heavenly thing she'd tasted in a while, was salted with tears. Not literally, of course. Gigi was a good cook, apparently the main reason her husband and she had wed. But the lingering feeling of sadness present in this house made even Yako's temporal distortion of an apatite quiver.

"Yeah, wow... I mean, eating yourself to death, that's... pretty messed up." Neuro leaned over the counter, arms crossed over his waist.

"If you two don't shut up, I'm going to use your skulls for paperweights."

"All our records are digital, asshole!" Godai retorted, but past that he said nothing more- he had heard the footsteps outside the door as well. It was time to begin.

* * *

"Sensei is very pleased that all of you have arrived to hear her opinions on this mystery," Neuro cheered out, face radiating honesty. A few women guests tittered at him, and one winked. Neuro ignored the spectators, standing on the side, to fix the three policemen with his rather intimidating stare. Madam Ayame and Gigi sat on stools near the fridges, watching with tense, worn expressions.

Yako, standing at Neuro's side, gave a small sigh. It always went like this. For her, this was the worst part and the best part of the case: she was glad to put away criminals, but she felt like a fraud every time Neuro passed his own thoughts off as hers. Today, though, she reminded herself, she had solved this one. Even Neuro had been surprised at how quickly it had been done, though he hadn't said much on the topic. "...so, yes! Unfortunately, we are certain that this is no misfortune but rather a murder!" He tapped her shoulder gently.

"The murderer is..." Yako raised her arm to point at Madam Ayame, slumped in the exact spot Godai had previously occupied. "You!"

Madam Ayame actually choked, dissolving into a coughing fit amongst the sudden uproar in the room. When things had settled down, Gigi asked carefully,

"But how could that be, Miss Piggish Detective? Ayame ate herself to death, and that's... a rather unusual method of killing. And besides, why on earth would her own mother kill her?" Yako found herself impressed at Gigi's acting. If she hadn't seen the woman in tears but a few hours earlier, she might have suspected that she knew nothing of Ayame's death.

"Look to the spice rack. There are the normal things of an extremely well-stocked kitchen, yes?" Neuro nodded to Yako for her to continue. She felt a small flush of pleasure at the acknowledgment of her achievement and stepped up to the counter.

"But look, up there. The murder weapon is disguised as a bottle of vanilla, but the killer made a serious mistake: Vanilla isn't an herb or a spice!" Yako nodded to Madam Ayame. "You don't cook, so you understandably thought that it would be the perfect hiding place until you could come back and get it."

Madam Ayame looked deeply uncomfortable, but she clamped her jaw shut and assumed a proud expression.

"What is it?" Gigi asked, taking the bottle down and handing it to Yako as if it was a spider. The police, standing together, muttered and straightened up their posture. (Godai wondered privately if they had thought that Yako was just some kind of national joke.)

"Poison," Yako stated firmly, taking the bottle in her hand. Her courage seemed to fail her, though, and she faltered for an instant. Neuro sprang in for her, shooting her a puzzled look.

"You poisoned Miss Ayame, just enough for her to feel the effects. Then you told her the antidote was hidden in one of the items in the pantry and let her do your job for you- she ate herself to death! Because she was so ill and so unused to eating much of anything, she couldn't tell when it became dangerous. She ate the food herself, yes, but it was you that drove her to it!" Neuro grabbed Yako's shoulders and pulled her in front of him at the last minute. "That's what Sensei said!"

The room fell into a worse uproar than before, during which Godai had to grab Gigi from attacking Madam Ayame and Yako handed the bottle of poison to Neuro.

Yako pressed her lips together for a moment, thinking, wondering, trying to figure out how much she dared to ask.

"Why would you do such a terrible thing? Miss Ayame worshiped you. She changed herself to suit you, punished her body to please your tastes." She lowered her head. "I don't understand why you would want to hurt somebody that was already hurting herself." There was a tense silence in which Gigi, still being held back by Godai, hissed low, incoherent words of rage and Madam Ayame stared from Yako to Neuro and back.

She broke the silence with a scream. Yako, watching her transformation through Neuro's power, recoiled from the emaciated, richly clothed woman that flexed in front of them in a fit of nervous pleasure, her eye sockets sunken, her hands nothing more than mere claws of bone.

"That girl! She was always so pudgy, so plump, just like her revolting father! Like a roasted chicken, almost!" The woman curled in on herself, wailing in horror. "But she had my name, and she looked so like me! When I loved my husband it was one thing, but after we divorced, he left me penniless, a used woman- I hated him! Every time I saw her face I saw us in it, especially in all that revolting pudge!"

"Ayame was bone-thin!" Gigi shook with anger, fighting against Godai with all her strength. Yako gasped as she freed an arm from him, but one of the policemen rushed over and helped Godai to settle her down onto a stool, talking quietly with her.

Madam Ayame shook her head. "She would never be thin as she could be. She would never be like me, no matter how much she looked like it! She was just a reminder of what ended and ohhh," Madam Ayame screamed, covering her face, "her disease, you called it, but it was her last chance to be beautiful! She was so close!"

"She was so close to _dying!_" Howled Gigi, clawing at the counter. The policemen remaining stepped forwards, one sliding handcuffs into his hands. "The only time you helped her, you helped her to die just when she finally wanted to live!"

* * *

That night, after the police had taken Madam Ayame away in a haze of lights, Yako lay on her bed, looking up at Neuro as he inspected a vanilla bean he had found in the kitchen.

Gigi had kissed her cheeks so many times that they looked rouged from her lipstick, then showered her in cakes, pies, tortes, cookies, and all manner of delicious things. Yako had eaten as much of it as she could with gusto, but now, lying in bed with a fat stomach and the words of Madam Ayame in her mind, she couldn't help but feel a little... ugly.

Wasn't it true that thinness was beauty? Madam Ayame had come from New York, one of the fashion capitals of the world. She certainly knew. Yako put a hand over her eyes as she thought deeply about the matter. Where did one draw the line, though? When did it become an illness rather than an aspiration to grace?

Miss Ayame had died for her weight and her mother's own selfishness. But she'd been thin, so thin, too thin. She had lost sight of the borders of beauty and health. Yako couldn't help but feel that perhaps she, rather than Miss Ayame, might look a little better if she held back from the sweets a bit. She looked over at the pile of macaroons Gigi had sent Neuro and Yako off to bed with; Godai had been eating pizza and talking with her when they left.

"Aren't you going to eat those, slave?" Neuro asked from the ceiling, dropping the vanilla bean down onto Yako. She caught it and looked at the pile.

"The macaroons?"

"Mm." He dropped onto her bed, landing neatly in a legs-crossed position.

"Well, I was thinking maybe I'd wait to share them with Sasazuka and Ishigaki. After all, Gigi is famous in her own right as a baker. I'm sure they'd like some." Neuro fixed her with a hard stare, his eyes the flat, unfriendly color he usually reserved for criminals.

Yako looked at his hair, unable in the moment to meet his eyes. She wasn't the sort of girl to think much about this kind of thing, but it had stuck in her mind for some reason.

"Humans," Neuro finally said, looking unsure, an expression he usually reserved for matters of the human heart, "are the only species I know of that will starve themselves for some invisible ideal." Yako looked him full in the face at that.

"But Neuro," she sighed, "you're starving yourself up here while waiting for the ultimate mystery, which might never come." It felt cruel to say it, but sometimes she did wonder.

He leaned forwards, expression shifting into a curious blend of aggression and interest.

"But I'm not turning my nose up at perfectly good food in the meantime, am I?" Yako bit her tongue before she could say something stupid. This close to him, she could feel the lightness in her bones that had taken seat over the months, as she grew closer to him.

She knew she loved him- that much was obvious to her. But it mystified her that she did. He was rude, abusive, and definitely not the nice boy her father had wanted for her when she was a girl. A quiet computer programmer, her father had told her, or a tender-hearted businessman, or maybe even a noble restaurant owner: these were acceptable men. A mystery-eating demon from Hell whose main hobby was throwing her out windows and squeezing her skull into a pulp? No, not so much.

Neuro reached forwards and took the bean from her. "You'll get hungry. Eat them." Yako flopped down onto the bed, sighing. She wanted to. She was hungry, too. So Madam Ayame, a woman of the world, had felt that to be skin and bones and nothing else was beauty? So what! She had been sick, sick enough to kill her own daughter. She didn't care what some insane bone-woman thought. But now...

"Nn, I'm too lazy." Yako closed her eyes, feeling the bed rise as Neuro got off. He must have gone back to the ceiling.

"Here," Neuro said, leaning over her to place the platter next to her. "Eat them. Their smell is making me hungry for human flesh!" She turned her head to watch him slide his hand out from under the plate, then caught it in her own and tugged slightly. "I might get hungry enough to eat _you_, slave." His free hand buried itself in her hair, and he bared his teeth in a blank smile, hand clamping down with iron strength.

"Owowow, Neuroooo!"

But despite his hard words and dangerous tone, Neuro let Yako hold on to his hand for a moment before pulling it free, taking his other hand off her as well. Yako turned her head to the side, suddenly tired from the whole day. She'd been up since the crack of dawn, and she'd even solved the mystery almost entirely by herself.

"I thought you only ate mysteries," she lazed out, trying to decide if she should get under the covers yet. It was still early spring, and the nights were a little too cold yet for her little nightgown.

He responded by removing his jacket and tossing it onto a nearby chair, approaching her with a predatory stalk to his step that Yako didn't recall ever seeing before. Not that she really paid much attention to how he walked, she admitted; usually she was more interested in what he was thinking or when he was next planning on giving her brain damage.

But now, as he approached her with that slow swing to his lean body, his expression focused and intent, Yako fought hard not to react. She'd never hear the end of it, she knew, no matter _what_ his intentions actually were. She couldn't help a quick, nervous little lick of her lower lip, though, something that seemed to make Neuro's eyes slide into that strange half-glow state they had gotten into earlier.

He grinned, thoroughly ruining the moment, then pitched her up so high she almost touched the ceiling. Her scream was impressive even to her ears (though she would have rather not had any reason to let loose in the first place), though Neuro's cackling was louder.

When she landed on the bed, minimally cushioned by Neuro's grip on her ankle, Godai burst into the room in a frenzy.

"What's wrong?!" He shouted. Yako looked at him from under the skirt of her nightgown, butt straight up in the air, horrified. He stared back, looking like nothing so much as a deer in the headlights.

"You see," Neuro purred, releasing Yako, "today her panties had maki rolls on them. Very interesting, yes?"

Yako entertained the thought of biting his ankle but discarded it. He'd probably just throw her into the garden and make her flash the entire resort in the process. Godai, however, didn't seem to harbor the same reservations. He and Neuro were already going at it, and if she knew Godai, he'd be shedding a few manly tears tonight from the pain.

Pulling herself to her feet with a sigh, Yako readied the first-aid kit. Poor Godai, he never gave up. While she waited for them to finish, though...

...well, she did have those macaroons.

* * *


End file.
